That's a valid point. I may choose to keep most of the mp3 files I have now, as long as the quality is good.

I feel a bit uneasy about the possibility that some songs could have been converted to 320kbps from a lower bitrate. I think you or some other user mentioned checking spectrum or something using Spek/Spectro? I've found the webpage but I'm not sure if I could make sense of the information given to me by the software

You could always post the image here and people will give you the diagnosis.

As for scratched CD's that you mentioned earlier, there is a lot of redundant data on CD's so they really have to be scratched to hell before they start messing up. And even so they'll just skip and whatnot. Nothing to do with audio quality as a whole, it only effects the moments that skip.

....they really have to be scratched to hell before they start messing up. And even so they'll just skip and whatnot. Nothing to do with audio quality as a whole, it only effects the moments that skip.

And hardware CD players have good error correction and usually cope well even with badly scratched discs. I've found a few discs that skip in a CD player but which could be ripped accurately, given some patience and the willingness to try different drives, rippers and rip strategies (burst vs secure, with/without c2 etc.).

Hm, so what does this mean this track has been converted from a low quality file?

No, not necessarily. Clipping is related to the loudness of the audio. This shows clipping because either 1) the artist or recording engineer made the track with excessive volume and even the highest quality encoding will exhibit the same clipping
Or 2) somebody took the original recording and boosted the volume before encoding it to this format, which caused the loudest parts to clip

No, not necessarily. Clipping is related to the loudness of the audio. This shows clipping because either 1) the artist or recording engineer made the track with excessive volume and even the highest quality encoding will exhibit the same clipping
Or 2) somebody took the original recording and boosted the volume before encoding it to this format, which caused the loudest parts to clip

.....Or 2) somebody took the original recording and boosted the volume before encoding it to this format, which caused the loudest parts to clip

In fact there is no need for the person to boost the volume to get this same result. Lossy encoding alone can cause clipping with some samples, see previous link to hydrogen audio wiki:

Quote:

Lossy audio encoding and decoding can cause the highest/lowest sample values to go over the allowed limit (in practice having the sequential max/min values), which may lead to clipping seen by analysis tools, or even audible clipping. But whether the clipping is truly audible or not is a totally different thing. There are different methods to avoid clipping in lossy audio. Look at the specific audio format answers how to best avoid clipping in each case.

Now consider that happening twice or more.

I have even bought flac files from a quite well known legitimate music store and found that some were derived from lossy files (I corresponded with the store who informed me the files had been supplied in this form by the performing artists and to their credit they went to some effort to replace the files with ones losslessly encoded from CD). If you get music by any means where you are unable to verify the origin then all bets are off. It's not exactly unknown to come across music files that have been through lossy encoders more than once.